CFP: Romantic Shakespeare (8/15/06; journal issue)

full name / name of organization:

Douglas Brooks

contact email:

dbrooks@tamu.edu

CFP: Romantic Shakespeare. Shakespeare Yearbook, Winter 2007.

Henry James once noted that to the English an outing to Stratford wasnot just a day out, not just a visit to a pretty old town with afamous dead author, but a pilgrimage to "The Holy of Holies"; thescene itself of the "nativity." James was being ironic, but to manyeditors, and writers, and theatre personalities working in the era ofthe English Romantic Movement, grappling with the works ofShakespeare became a serious devotional duty.

Shakespeare's plays and poems can be said to have become objects ofreligious reflection for the Romantics, a kind of mirror up to the"mystic." For Shakespeare's nineteenth-century British editors, oneof their principal tasks was to prepare readers to find deepermeanings in Shakespeare's plays and poems, and they viewed thereading of his works as a cornerstone of English culture.Concomitantly, writers such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,and Keats constructed Shakespeare as a figure from whom it waspossible to acquire something like spiritual and poetic wisdom. Formany of these writers, his plays and poems were foundational to theirown efforts to write.

In conjunction with theme of the Winter 2007 issue of the ShakespeareYearbook, "Romantic Shakespeare," the journal seeks essays fromscholars of Renaissance or English Romantic literature that explorethe editing or interpretation of Shakespeare and early modernliterature in the Romantic period, as well as the impact of earlymodern literature on the literary production of writers associatedwith the English Romantic Movement.

Please submit title and 200-word abstract of proposed essays alongwith a brief scholarly bio by August 15, 2006 to Douglas A. Brooks(dbrooks_at_tamu.edu). Digital submissions as e-mail attachments inRich Text Format or Microsoft Word only. Do not send CVs. Finalessays will be due May 15, 2007.

The Shakespeare Yearbook is a broadly based international annual ofscholarship relating to Shakespeare, his time, and his impact onlater periods. Maximum length for contributions is 35 double-spacedpages in Times New Roman 12 point. Illustrations are welcome.Citations should be formatted according to the Chicago Manual ofStyle. The name of the author/s should only appear in anaccompanying cover letter. All essays are reviewed anonymously bytwo readers. All essay submissions must be as digital attachments inMicrosoft Word or Rich Text Format